Dreaming Dreams

I have achieved the American dream: I have everything I ever thought I wanted, and I'm not happy. Even more - I have everything that everyone else wanted for me, and even knowing that I have managed to thoroughly impress the watching eyes of society doesn't manage to make me feel good about my life.

I have a good Bais Yaakov education, went to the right seminary, come from a good family. I have a good secular education, too, and by now, I have a decent job with the prospects of a very good one. Of course, the reason a good BY girl concerned herself with secular education and job prospects is obvious: I wanted to be able to support my husband in kollel without bankrupting my parents or my in-laws. I wanted kollel because I believed in it, and I wouldn't ask someone else to finance my dream.

That secular education was a bit of an issue while I was in shidduchim; after all, what top learner worth his salt would be willing to go out with a girl who went to a secular college? (You'd be surprised. Many.) Still, I'll admit that most of the shidduchim suggested were "pas nisht" for a girl of my family and caliber. So when I finally got engaged, at my advanced age, to a boy with a reputation for solid, serious learning, who went to all (and only) the right yeshivos, who came from a wonderful family, who was fresh out of the freezer, everybody said, "Wow! How did she pull that off?"

Even then, the very night of engagement, I was hesitant. How could I commit to spending the rest of my life with someone I barely knew? I knew that everything about him was right and good and perfect for me - I remember crying to my mother while saying, "But he's perfect. He's perfect!" - and yet I wasn't sure I could do it. Everyone told me it was normal to be nervous during the engagement. Marriage is such a big unknown, and it's frightening. It will be okay.

It's not okay. Everything is still perfect on paper, but I'm not. My marriage is not anywhere near perfect, however wonderful a couple we look on the outside. I absolutely hate when people ask me, "So how's married life?" because I can't answer the question. I'm not going to tell the truth, chas v'shalom, but I don't like being a hypocrite. The truth, though, is that I hate married life. I don't enjoy spending time with my husband, I don't like having to give up activities and independence that conflict with my wifely duties, and I don't like sex. And I feel tremendously guilty about that.

I've gone through stages since I got married. First, I blamed the system. Then I blamed myself for not realizing that I didn't want to live the system. Then, I decided that I hadn't been lying all those years, that I could live the system, but that I couldn't be married to someone I didn't love. Never mind that "true, lasting love comes after marriage and takes work" - you might be able to see that in ten years your life will be perfect, but you first have to survive those ten years! And it will never be perfect if you merely survive the passage of time: you have to be able to make improvements as time moves along.

My current stage is perhaps the most frightening of all. I've mostly stopped caring. I can live this way, and it will make a lot of people happy if I do. Myself, I don't know if I'll ever be happy: I'm not convinced that getting divorced would improve my situation. My husband is a wonderful guy, and I'd be hard-pressed to find a better person, in terms of midos and in terms of potential. Being divorced wouldn't necessarily open me up to better choices: divorced and frum is a stigma she'ein kamohu, and divorced and not frum is a choice I'm not quite willing to make yet. My Yiddishkeit - and my pride in my Yiddishkeit - is too deeply ingrained in me. I have my doubts sometimes about my lifestyle, but I can't take the step and say I don't believe in G-d. And frum or not, my upbringing has left some indelible imprints that will forever affect my ability to form relationships. I'm not sure I'm capable of falling in love, or even in lust. And if it's never going to happen, what would be the point of ruining my life and someone else's for the meager chance at dubious happiness?